12/31/08

Jenna Louise tagged me. She has a great blog so please go and check it out.Here are the rules to play the game:

1. When you are tagged you are asked to list eight random facts about yourself and post them on your blog for visitors to enjoy. This is gonna be fun!

2. Tag eight of your blogging friends and leave them a comment that they have been tagged and to join in the fun if they have the opportunity. (If not, that's okay. They can still enjoy the random facts everyone shares:) Be sure to list a link to your eight friends in your posting.

1. I have a fear of snakes so massive that even if I see a picture of a snake it may give me nightmares. When I see one in my yard I can't walk across my grass for days.2. I love potatoes. I eat some form of them everyday, usually mashed or baked.3. I have always been a dog lover and still am, even though when I was nine I was mauled by a German Shepard and nearly died.4. An Alaskan cruise is just one of my many dream vacations.5. I collect cookbooks, old sewing paraphernalia and thimbles.6. I love to bake.7. When I was born my parents owned a dairy farm. I can milk a cow by hand, bale hay and butcher a chicken. Not that I enjoy doing any of those things, but I could if my life depended on it.8. Crowds make me nervous and I'm very uncomfortable in a room with more than 10 people.Wow, that was much harder than I thought it was going to be. And since I don't think I even have eight friends that read my blog, I'm just going to tag everyone that is reading this. You can just go ahead and play this game on your blog.

12/27/08

I'm on a roll with my wool sweaters so I had to make some wool slippers to wear on long car trips, since not only does the heater not work on my side, it blows cold air directly on my feet. So I'm hoping this does the trick until we can get the problem fixed. Once again I took it one step further and lined them with polar fleece.

I made these mittens for my daughter who walks from her college dorm to work in sometimes -20 wind chills. The pattern is from the book Warm Fuzzies by Betz White. They are made with an old felted sweater, then for added warmth, I lined them with polar fleece. I offered to jazz them up a little with some felted flowers or buttons or something, but she was less than enthusiastic about that, so I left well enough alone, since I really want her to use them.

12/19/08

I joined a Christmas Dotee doll swap on Stitchin' Fingers and this is the wonderful doll that arrived from Christine in Sydney, Australia. I send an angel to my person and I was hoping to receive an angel in return.

12/11/08

I did a little demo for a couple of friends on making pin keepers out of cd's. Two of them made pin keepers for me. The one on the left was made by Jeanette and she used wide mouth canning lids. The one on the right was made by Bonnie and I'm not sure what she used but it a little smaller that a cd.This one was made by me to show them you don't have to use cd's if you don't have any. It was made using wide mouth jar lids.

12/5/08

Last night we had our Crazy Quilt Christmas Meeting and we each had to bring a pin cushion. We played the number stealing game and I was lucky enough to draw number one, so I had the pick of stealing anyone's pin cushion. Since I had been given a funky chicken the night before and I had brought him for show and tell, he was sitting next to me clucking "I need a friend" so I just had to steal the very gorgeous glamorous crazy quilted pin cushion. Opposites attract so they are getting along very well.

This tea pot is the pin cushion that I made and brought for the exchange.

I took a Christmas gift tags class with some friends and we had so much fun I could hardly stand it. This past week I've been getting a little crazy making them and these are just a few of them. I think I made more tags than I give gifts. The ones that are going on my husbands, and childrens gifts will be going on the tree after they open their gifts. They would be really cute on all kinds of gifts, not just Christmas.

11/15/08

A Chrismas cracker consists of a cardboard tube wrapped in a brightly decorated twist of paper. The cracker is pulled by two people, and, much in the manner of a wishbone. It is typically filled with candy and trinkets. My sister and I would make these for our children when they were small and now I'm going the grown up version. It is filled with fun stuff for crazy quilting. I signed up for two. One of the requirements is that it must be wrapped in a crazy quilt block. This picture shows whole block and on the corner is the wrapped cracker.

11/13/08

I tried to get a close up of the crystals but they really don't show up in the picture.

This was one of those incidents where I went shopping with a friend, got home and was looking though my stuff and thought "What was I thinking!" This is really not my style or favorite colors at all, but I think I was drawn to it because of the sparkly crystals on it. So of course I had to buy the tool and crystals to go on it. I sent it out to be quilted and love what she did, so I think it just might grow on me after awhile.

10/7/08

This penny rug is from the book Quick & Easy Penny Rugs by Barbie Jo Paquin. It was easy but not quick for me. It took me over a year to get it done. I started it last year, then didn't get it done before Halloween so it just got buried in my sewing room. I found it while looking for something else and it only had about ten minutes of stitching left to do.

10/4/08

Last fall I did a demo on fabric postcards with a make and take it type of thing going on and I ended up with a lot of left over pumpkins and stars. So in the spirit of trying to get rid of stuff so I can buy new, I gave some away then just kept making postcards until I ran out of pumpkins. Two went out in the mail yesterday and the rest will be used for swaps, friends and family.This picture kind of reminds me of the - game which on of these is not like the other. But just in case you don't want to play that game, I'll make it easy, I made them all different. My personality type just will not allow me to make two things the same.

9/29/08

I've been playing around with old CD's and this is a pin cushion I made using two of them.

Well, before I had a chance to post a picture it had a horrible fate. I left town last night for a few hours and came home to find this. My dog somehow got it off the kitchen counter and this is what is left. My husband stopped her from totally destroying it, but she could have just as well, because I just don't see how it can be salvaged. I used wool for the inside and she has this obsession with wool, whether it's a sweater, coat or yarn. I think she would even attack a live sheep.

9/26/08

I belong to a small 30's group and each month one person brings a block and pattern and we have the option of making that block using our own color choice. Well I fell a little behind and needed to catch up. So here are my catch up blocks.

9/19/08

These are the two I worked on. It was hard to decide, I wanted to work on all of them but I have to save room for others.The apple/ pear lady is wearing a shower cap so I covered it with french knots and put a charm pear on her butt. On the seam treatment I did the herringbone stitch and had to do one of my favorite stitches, the oyster stitch.This one I added red rick rack, straight stitches and beads. the bunch of bananas was just screaming at me to put that on, so I listened and did what I was told. Then I also added my all time favorite - the feather stitch.

These are all four of her blocks.This project is a round robin with our small group of local crazy quilters. These are Bonnie's blocks and they were so much fun to work on.